Shocker, a Republican hints at ending the banking industry’s corporate plutocracy. Though typically weird in a way that conservatives can be in their convoluted logic. Conservative presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is against the very modest financial reform bill known as Dodd-Frank ( as modest as it is, the banking industry and conservatives have fought to let the regulations start – The Shameful Murder Of Dodd-Frank ), but say that deregulation of the banking industry back in the 90s was probably a mistake – Gingrich Admits Deregulation Of Wall Street In The ’90s Was ‘Probably A Mistake’

The repeal of Glass-Steagall led to the creation of mega-banks like Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase that combine traditional lending with risky investment banking. Many economists believe that the repeal led to the financial crisis of 2008. “As a result [of the repeal], the culture of investment banks was conveyed to commercial banks and everyone got involved in the high-risk gambling mentality. That mentality was core to the problem that we’re facing now,” said Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

Though he had resigned by the time the final blow was dealt to Glass-Steagall in 1999, Gingrich was instrumental in picking it apart.

Before the Great Recession, the biggest economic crash since 1929, there were 12 too big to fail banks. Now there are seven. Anyone think the economy is safer under the new even bigger banks. Gee, what would a capitalist do? Maybe one that has read a little Adam Smith or Frederick Hayek. Breaking them each up into smaller competitive enterprises would spread the risk to many smaller entities. Those new banks and investment houses would have some healthy competition. But ya know, they would then have less capital, thus less money for lobbying, might start behaving like bankers instead of gambling addicts and have a little less political pull. So our current feudal lords of finance will continue business as usual.

There is a little Chris Isaak in Bondy. Yet a ying-yang quality – like but not like. Sad, though not as deep down heart shattering as the Fiona Apple song from Sunday. Unfortunately because of the live recording there is a kind of weird reverb from the guitar. Just concentrate on Bondy’s voice.

Am i fascinated by patterns. Probably. people much smarter than my keep studying patterns and different categories within those patterns. People are not lemmings, but they do things in patterns. Demographers have gotten very good at predicting population in trends in terms of numbers and movement – in the U.S. for instance people are slowly migrating from the Rustbelt to the Sunbelt. That in turn has led to many southern states who were once deeply red shifting to purple and many now consider North Carolina at least a marginally blue state ( thank Chapel Hill and coastal areas for that). The Physics of Terror

Last summer, physicist Aaron Clauset was telling a group of undergraduates who were touring the Santa Fe Institute about the unexpected mathematical symmetries he had found while studying global terrorist attacks over the past four decades. Their professor made a comment that brought Clauset up short. “He was surprised that I could think about such a morbid topic in such a dry, scientific way,” Clauset recalls. “And I hadn’t even thought about that. It was just … I think in some ways, in order to do this, you have to separate yourself from the emotional aspects of it.”

[ ]…“When you start averaging over the differences, you see there are patterns in the way terrorists’ campaigns progress and the frequency and severity of the attacks,” he says. “This gives you hope that terrorism is understandable from a scientific perspective.” The research is no mere academic exercise. Clauset hopes, for example, that his work will enable predictions of when terrorists might get their hands on a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon — and when they might use it.

It is a bird’s-eye view, a strategic vision — a bit blurry in its details — rather than a tactical one. As legions of counterinsurgency analysts and operatives are trying, 24-style, to avert the next strike by al-Qaeda or the Taliban, Clauset’s method is unlikely to predict exactly where or when an attack might occur. Instead, he deals in probabilities that unfold over months, years and decades — probability calculations that nevertheless could help government agencies make crucial decisions about how to allocate resources to prevent big attacks or deal with their fallout.

Perhaps it will sink in to certain agencies that x-raying children and grandma is not a very productive use of resources.